schoolteacher,
teacher of faith
and Christian orator
- by Father
Giuseppe Oddone *
The Election of Leo XIV: An Invitation to
Draw Closer to St. Augustine
Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, former
General of the Augustinian Order from 2001 to 2013, and then missionary bishop
in the diocese of Chiclayo in Peru from 2014 to 2023, was elected Pope on May
8, 2025. He was finally recalled to Rome by Pope Francis in January 2023 and
appointed Prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops, President of the Pontifical
Commission for Latin America, and created Cardinal on September 20, 2023. He
took the name Leo XIV. The election of a spiritual son of Saint Augustine as
Supreme Pontiff represents an invitation to deepen the profound and meaningful
bond he has with this Saint. It is an inner affinity that immediately
manifested itself in various ways: first and foremost as a religious man,
because his spiritual formation was and continues to be directly inspired by
the life, writings, and spirituality of the great Doctor of the Church, who
emphasized community life, the search for God, interiority, fraternal love, and
service to the Church. Before becoming Pope, as Superior General, Fr. Robert
Francis Prevost was moderator and director of the Augustinianum Patristic
Institute in Rome. This institute is a leading center of study specializing in
patristics, with a particular focus on the works and spirituality of St.
Augustine. In the early years of his priesthood, after his academic training,
from 1988 to 1999, the current Pope served as a formator of seminarians in
Peru, in the diocese of Trujillo, and as a teacher of Canon Law, Patristics,
and Morals, modernizing the figure of St. Augustine as a teacher. The episcopal
and papal coat of arms of Leo XIV is typically Augustinian: beneath the papal
tiara and the two keys, one gold and the other silver, signs of papal power,
the heraldic shield is divided transversely into two parts: above, on a blue
field, a lily, the traditional symbol of the Virgin Mary; below, on a white
field, the red book, which represents both the word of God and the works of
Saint Augustine; the book is surmounted by a purple-red heart crowned with
flames and pierced by an arrow. This is a clear reference to Sacred Scripture
and its allegorical interpretation, which refers to the human heart as the
target of God's love: Lam . 3,1: “ Posuisti quasi signum ad sagittam ”
(You have placed me as a target for your arrow) and to Confessions IX,2,3: “ Sagittaveras
tu cor meum charitate tua ” (You have pierced my heart with your love). The
episcopal and papal motto of Pope Leo is also taken from Saint Augustine and
alludes to the mystery of the Church as Christus totus , the mystical
body of Christ: In Illo Uno Unum (Exposition on Psalm 127:3) or “in that One
(Christ) we are one”. With these words, Augustine underlines the unity of
Christians in Christ, despite their multiplicity. This motto is a clear sign of
Augustine’s influence on his pontificate and on his vision of the Church. Even
when he presented himself on the loggia of Saint Peter’s he quoted another
famous Augustinian phrase, which served as the backdrop to his entire speech:
For you I am a bishop, with you I am a Christian. It is taken from a speech by
Augustine, which sums up his pastoral method and which is worth quoting in its
entirety: “At the moment in which I fear to be for you, I am consoled by the
fact of being with you. For you I am a bishop, with you I am a Christian. That
name is a sign of the office received, this of grace, that is an occasion of
danger, this of salvation." (Sermo 340,1).
Augustine
schoolteacher
Augustine was born
in Tagaste, in present-day Algeria, in 354 AD. His initial training was in
grammar and rhetoric, fundamental disciplines in Roman education of the time,
which guided him toward political and legal careers. From a young age, he
displayed a keen intelligence and an innate aptitude for Latin, distinguishing
himself for his ability to understand and manipulate language with wordplay,
parallelisms and antitheses, rhymes and assonances, musical and rhythmic
clauses to conclude a sentence, his mastery of various oratorical styles, and
his attentiveness to his audience. He studied the manuals of the great Latin
rhetoricians, particularly Cicero and Quintilian, and he especially loved the
poet Virgil, absorbing his style and depth of thought. This classical
foundation, though initially aimed at a secular career, proved fundamental to
his future work as a teacher, and later as a preacher and writer, providing him
with the tools to express complex concepts clearly and effectively. As a
bishop, he himself wrote a comprehensive treatise on rhetoric, De doctrina.
christiana , addressed in particular to all those who have teaching and
preaching roles in the Church. After his initial studies, he expanded his
education in Tagaste and Madaura and completed it in Carthage.
Augustine then
embarked on a career as a rhetoric instructor and began his teaching career:
this lasted thirteen years, from 373 to 386, first in Thagaste, then in
Carthage, then one of the most important cities of the Roman Empire, where he
worked for several years. Here his reputation grew rapidly, attracting numerous
students. However, dissatisfied with the moral conduct of his students and the
superficiality of his colleagues, he decided to move. His next stop was Rome,
where he hoped to find more disciplined students and a more stimulating
environment. Although his Roman experience was not entirely without
disappointments, it was a period of further professional growth. His search for
a more prestigious position eventually took him to Milan, which at the time was
the de facto capital of the Western Empire. There, in 384 AD, he obtained the
imperial chair of rhetoric, the most prestigious of all. His time as a teacher
in this city not only honed his oratory skills, but also allowed him to delve
deeper into the dynamics of communication and learning. Milan proved to be a
decisive turning point in his life. He came into contact with Bishop Ambrose;
he was profoundly influenced by his preaching and intellectual depth, and in
387 Augustine converted to Christianity and was baptized.
Augustine,
teacher of faith and Christian orator
Having become a
Christian and later a priest and bishop, Augustine reconsidered his teaching.
He confessed that in the past he had sold a victorious eloquence and had served
vanity. He felt the need to scale back the ideals of the school of which he had
been a disciple and teacher, to place himself at the service not of vanity and
worldly success, but of truth; he proposed a new model of teacher and orator
with a cultural background drawn not only from the disciplines of rhetoric, but
above all from faith and Sacred Scripture. From this perspective, the Christian
teacher's primary task is to enlighten the mind, to penetrate the heart of the
student or listener, and to inspire faith. For this reason, he must first
experience the ascent to God: an interior journey, a navigation, a race, a
climb up the ladder of beings until he personally touches God in Jesus Christ,
the Word of God. But the Word descended to us in the mystery of creation, the
incarnation, Sacred Scripture, the Church, the poor, and continues to descend
in Christian teaching and preaching. The Christian teacher or orator, sometimes
with personal suffering but always in charity, must humble himself with the
little ones, adapting to their language and their understanding. Between
teacher and disciple, between preacher and orator, a form of mutual indwelling
must be created that fosters an intimate exchange of feelings and concepts. The
love of Christ, who humbled himself to death on the cross, is the soul and
motivation of all teaching and preaching: all of us, teacher and students,
preachers and listeners, are his fellow disciples. Christ also revolutionized
language, which must be essentially humble, because it is a message of
salvation addressed to all men, especially the least and the marginalized,
usually described in traditional pagan rhetoric with a contemptuous and
caricatural language.
The
Christian orator and the distinction between the three styles
Augustine
recognizes the importance and necessity of the sermo humilis for
Christian preaching. The main idea is that human speech must reflect the word
of the living God, which descends and penetrates like a sword to the marrow of
the soul and like a plow into the field of the heart. However, he does not
reject rhetoric, but Christianizes it. For him, the beauty and effectiveness of
language are not ends, but tools at the service of divine truth. He therefore
returns to the traditional distinction of classical rhetoric: the simple style
if you need to teach, the moderate or moderate style if you want to delight and
please the audience, the sublime style if you need to persuade. However , an
effective preacher must be able to switch easily from one style to another
depending on the topic and the desired effect on the audience. All of
Augustine's sermons manifest this flexibility, and demonstrate how rhetoric,
far from being an empty technique, can be a powerful vehicle for truth and
salvation. A Christian preacher or writer must be able to vary his style
depending on his objectives. His suggestions can also be useful for teachers
facing diverse classes or in particular emotional situations.
The
humble or simple style
The Christian
orator predominantly uses a simple style when teaching and presenting the
mysteries of faith to believers or explaining Sacred Scripture. This requires a
familiar, conversational tone that bridges distances and is sensitive to
emotional reactions. Augustine also seeks to establish a dialogue with his
audience, making them actors rather than listeners; at times, he even engages
in dialogue with the New Testament figures being discussed, such as Peter,
Paul, Martha, and Zacchaeus. Then there is the dialectical and argumentative
aspect, which awakens the intelligence, presenting the truth of faith with
clarity and simplicity of language and resolving difficulties, primarily for
believers along the lines of crede ut intelligas : an invitation to ignite
one's faith in order to understand. For Augustine, faith strengthens
intelligence. The simple style makes particular use of the sentence, that is,
an unexpected, sharp, and penetrating phrase, sustained by intense emotion,
which brings together two opposite poles: time and eternity, misery and mercy,
earthly suffering and heavenly bliss, sin and grace, man and God. The middle or
temperate style. Augustine also appreciated the middle style, which was much
sought after by his listeners. Its purpose was to please and delight listeners,
and it was particularly used in celebrating Christian feasts: the mystery of
the Trinity, the Incarnation with the relationship between the human and divine
natures in Christ, the birth of Jesus, his earthly life, the Passion, the
Resurrection, the beauty of creation. This style does not have an autonomous
function, as it did for pagan orators and sophists, but is always at the
service of the simple style that teaches, or the sublime style that persuades.
In creating beauty and delight, the middle style employs several techniques of
which Augustine is an unsurpassed master and model: parallelism of structure
and thought, figures of rhythm and sound with alliteration and assonance, the
antitheses inherent in the very structure of the Christian faith, and
gradations, generally with simple and very short sentences that insistently
hammer home an idea, echoing one another and becoming imprinted in the memory
through rhythmic clauses and rhyme, leading the listener from external delight
to the truth expressed in the Christian mystery. The Sublime Style When the
Christian orator must convert or inspire love of God and of one's brothers or
sorrow for scandals in the Church, he adopts a new form of style, the sublime
style. It presupposes an intense emotional charge, an inner suffering in the
face of the errors of Christians caught up in avarice, lust, and scandal. In
the sublime style, fervor of soul is essential: rhetorical ornaments are not
directly sought, but arise from emotional impetus. Typically, one resorts
almost unconsciously to figures of thought such as insistent and broken
questions, apostrophes to listeners, illuminating metaphors, examples from the
past, accumulations of terms with enumerations and paradoxes, in some cases
biting irony, but also anaphoras and epiphoras, that is, sentences that begin
and end with the same word. It is important to reconstruct and demolish the
psychological defense mechanisms that the listener unconsciously experiences.
Augustine employs sublime style in some of his sermons, particularly when he
seeks, without moralistic acidity but with brotherly compassion, to dissuade
Christians from avarice, adultery, sexual disorder, the plague of prostitution
and immoral entertainment, proposing and demolishing the motivations of his
listeners who believed this to be a sign of civilization and freedom. With
equally intense emotional charge, with a rhythm broken as if by a sob,
Augustine addresses his faithful and those who had sought refuge in the province
of Africa, speaking of the destruction of Rome in 410 at the hands of Alaric,
and demonstrating the falsity of the objections of those who blamed the
Christians for this enormous misfortune, a sign of the empire's decline. It
must be added, however, that a good Christian orator knows how to vary the
styles within his speech and move from an ornate and empathetic style,
predominantly in the introduction, to a simple style in presenting Christian
truth, to arrive at the sublime style in persuading listeners to concretely
live their faith. A final Augustinian observation: to be a good Christian
orator, you must first be a prayerful person, because we and our speeches are
in God's hands. It is the Spirit of God who "in that hour," the hour
of our address to our brothers, intervenes in the orator's words and makes them
effective.
*AIMC and UCIIM
national ecclesiastical assistent
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